Leading Garifuna musician reportedly among 12 dead in Honduras air crash
At least 12 people have died after a small plane crashed into the sea while taking off from a Caribbean island off Honduras, officials said.
The Lanhsa airlines plane departed at nightfall on Monday from Roatán, one of the Central American country's main tourist destinations, heading for the port of La Ceiba, on the mainland.
The aircraft 'made a sharp turn to the right of the runway and fell into the water', civil aviation official Carlos Padilla said.
'The plane almost fell on us. I was fishing,' a fisherman told HCH television.
The fire department said 12 people were killed in the crash. Five people were rescued and one is missing.
The Honduran musician Aurelio Martínez, a prominent member of the Garifuna music scene, was among the dead, according to local media reports.
Martínez, who between 2006 and 2010 was the country's first Black congressman, recorded a string of records, and was described by the Guardian in 2017 as 'the finest living exponent of the lilting, soulful music of the Garifuna people.'
Dramatic video uploaded to social media by the national police showed officers and other rescue workers carrying survivors on to a rocky coastline, some in stretchers, as a nearby boat shone a bright light amid the darkness.
The injured passengers included a 40-year-old French citizen, who will be transferred to hospital in the city of San Pedro Sula on the mainland, said Maj Wilmer Guerrero of the fire department.
Fifteen passengers were onboard the plane, along with two pilots and a flight attendant, police said.
The crash, which happened about a kilometer from the coast, was caused by an 'apparent mechanical failure' on the British-made Jetstream 41, the statement added.
The Honduran president, Xiomara Castro, said she had 'immediately activated' an emergency committee made up of the armed forces, firefighters and others to assist the victims of the accident.
Agence France-Press and Reuters contributed reporting
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